


Long Exposure

by sasspan



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: HeartGold & SoulSilver | Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver Versions
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 12:12:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13501444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasspan/pseuds/sasspan
Summary: At the end of Victory Road, when Typhlosion had hit the ground, Silver had known what strength was.





	Long Exposure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BatchSan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BatchSan/gifts).



> Hi BatchSan, and happy holidays from your secret stantler (??). I waffled a lot on what to write for you--I have half a Cynthia fic that I might post later!!--but hopefully this turned out okay!! You said you liked backstories and stuff that happened off-screen; so here's some Silver, post-Victory Road but pre-Mt. Moon. It's mostly gen, I think, but I tried to add a bit of Ethan/Silver in there as well. I hope you like it! :D

Goldenrod City was the exact opposite of the sort of place Silver usually preferred. Big and bustling, filled with light and noise and smog; he’d hated it the first time he’d visited, and he hated it even more now.

Which was why it was perfect for the time being. Whenever _Champion_ Ethan tumbled off cloud nine and back to earth, there was a chance he’d come looking; and Silver wasn’t sure he wanted to be found.

Still, he thought, pulling up the collar of his shirt to keep from breathing in too much of the air. This stupid city was a steep price to pay for a little bit of peace.

Dusk was draping itself across the sky; the Magnet Train pulled into the station with a breathless roar. At his side Sneasel was watching the evening rush with wary curiosity. Its presence next to him was… unsettling. He could feel it darting glances at him every few minutes, like it was afraid of him. His stomach twisted at the thought, and then his mind twisted in confusion. Months ago, or even weeks ago, his pokémon fearing him would have been a victory in itself. Fear was respect, and respect was power; what other way could there have been?

Now he was not so sure.

“Hey,” he said, a little muffled by his shirt collar. Sneasel’s ear twitched, and it darted him another glance. Silver cleared his throat, pulling down the collar. “Hey. Do you… do you like this? Being out of your pokéball?”

A pause, and then Sneasel nodded carefully.

Silver huffed under his breath, frustrated with himself more than anyone else. “Okay. All right. We’ll do this more often then.”

 

* * *

 

At the end of Victory Road, when Typhlosion had hit the ground, Silver had known what strength was. When Ethan had stood victorious, his pokémon panting at his side, Silver had _felt_ what strength was. The flashing of Ethan’s eyes; the slight tremble of his mouth, like he was just about to smile, but wouldn’t let himself. The adoring glances of his pokémon, still standing on shaking limbs. Strength; it had seemed to swell from him, his team, through the space between them, and Silver had understood, suddenly.

But like a struck match, it flared bright and blinding for only a moment before being blown out. The brightness of Ethan’s gaze had faded as he turned to Silver, and something else had taken its place; softer, weaker. Pity? The understanding Silver had felt shriveled up into nothing; he’d wrenched his eyes to the ground, mumbled something about Lance, and not giving up yet.

“Okay,” Ethan had said simply, that damn softness in his voice persisting. “I’ll see you then, Silver.”

Then he had turned, pushed forward, and Silver was left once more scrabbling in the dark. Behind him lay Victory Road; and in front of him…

 

* * *

 

 

Silver spent his days in Goldenrod holed up in the tiny Pokémon Center room that overlooked the train station. His nights he spent wandering the neon-lit streets, holding half-hearted practice battles with Game Corner nuts and late shift commuters. It was pathetically dull, but what else was there to do? He was trapped at an impasse—he could not go back; he did not know how to go forward.

The presence of his pokémon at his side became familiar to him. The weeks bled together, orange and sticky in the summer heat, and now he could tell apart the warmth of Typhlosion at his shoulder from the hovering chill of Haunter; he knew the difference between the sound of Alakazam’s steady footsteps and Sneasel’s hesitant ones.

Uncomfortably, he thought of Ethan, how he’d always have one of his pokémon scurrying behind him. Silver had thought it stupid, impractical…but maybe there was something to it. His own team seemed to be pushing themselves more in battle, fighting a little longer, a little harder…

Another thing that he came to know was the shape of the Radio Tower. Every evening, the setting sun silhouetted it in his window, a dark and prickly spire jabbing into the sky. Silver couldn’t help but think of the Rocket Executives and their idiotic plan. _Asking_ Giovanni to come back—pah! As if his father had ever done anything that had been _asked_ of him. _Asking_ was not the Rocket way; power had to be _taken_. The Executives should have known that. The fact that they hadn’t—well, that was why they were idiots, and why they had failed.

Still. He had to wonder. The signal had been broadcast; there were reports of it being received as far as the Sevii Islands. Maybe, somehow, under whatever rock his father was hiding under…

“Pah!” he spat, making Golbat squeak with surprise from the corner of his room. “No, it’s nothing,” he said in response to its puzzled expression. “It’s nothing.”

 

* * *

 

 

He missed traveling.

The realization startled Silver—for years it felt like he had been pushing on, with gritted teeth, only to reach a formless goal. Now, he didn’t know if there was anything to push forward to. There was no reason to be on the road, but his bones still itched with the desire to move.

He stifled the urge as much as he could, taking brisk walks around the bike shop, the department store, the Terminal; he gave the Gym a wide berth, not relishing the thought of running into that bratty little girl with the miltank.

It was on one of these walks that he saw, splashed across one of the huge screens of the store, the latest breaking news: Champion Ethan, so freshly crowned, boarding the S.S. Aqua, off to visit rustic Kanto.

The sight stopped him in his tracks, but only for the briefest moment. Then he was off again, striding hard, his breathing rough in the still warm air. Magneton beeped in alarm and hurried to catch up.

Ethan, on the screen. Those same flashing eyes; that same slight tremble of his mouth, but this time, this time, he’d smiled, wide and careless…Silver wanted to shout, to pull something apart with his hands, that stupid, careless smile!

He tried to be cool-headed about it. There was no reason to feel this way; there was no reason to begrudge Ethan for moving forward when he himself could not.

Still, Silver thought. Still. Still—

He stopped again. His breath, his heart, it caught up to him in a sudden and insufferable rush. Still, still, he had thought, he had thought Ethan might have waited. That he might have searched. That he might have been at the same standstill that Silver had been…that the softness in his voice at Victory Road might not have been pity, but instead…

“Fuck!” he snarled, and caught his head in his hands. This was pathetic. This was why he had lost, why he would always lose. He crouched, his head pounding, feeling more wretched than he’d felt since he’d arrived in this city, this stupid fucking city! There was nothing to do, nowhere to go. He’d just die here, choked by the smog and the garish lights and the senseless noise. He stared unseeingly at the pavement below for hours or weeks or years.

Then—a soft touch on his shoulder. Silver looked up blearily, expecting—he didn’t know what. A police officer? A shopaholic? Whitney herself?

Instead he found himself looking at Magneton’s gleaming dome. A Steel-type, not the most sentimental usually, but—he was taken aback by the concern in its small eyes. It beeped gently, nudging him again with quiet insistence, as if to say—come on. Come on.

He sat there for a few more minutes, as his breathing steadied. Then he stood, and put a careful hand on his pokémon’s head.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

 

* * *

 

 

The Magnet Pass was more expensive than he would have thought. He could have stolen one, probably, but…

Anyways, he had just enough left over from two months of casual battling to cover the cost. The next train was at ten the following morning; he packed his few bags, gave his room card back to the Nurse Joy at the front counter.

“On to greener pastures?” she asked him, smiling.

Silver thought of Viridian’s fresh meadows, a memory almost forgotten. “Sort of.”

He got to the station right as the gleaming chrome doors of the Train hissed open. The carriage was empty and bright with the late morning light; Silver waited for Typhlosion to hop up onto the seat before sitting himself.

The doors closed with another hiss, and the conductor’s voice over the intercom blurrily announced their departure. With a slight jolt, the train started to move forward.

Typhlosion whined, its fur standing on end, and gave Silver a worried look. The train was picking up speed; it slid past the department store, the Gym, the Pokémon Center. Soon they would enter the first tunnel.

“It’s okay,” Silver said. “We’re just going to Kanto.”

Kanto, where Ethan was, where his father might be, where Silver would maybe, once again, understand the strength of a gentle hand. Kanto, on the other side of the tunnel.

The spire of the Radio Tower was quickly becoming smaller and smaller.

“It’s okay,” he said again.


End file.
